The Wonder Dog has coprophagia. For those of you who are neither Latin scholars nor perverts, this mean she has developed a taste for poop.

I swear, I wasn't even going to discuss this here. Even in this age of uncensored personal revelations, I figured there are some things you just don't need to know. I was content to keep WD's dirty habit on the down-low.

But she pushed me over the brink tonight. I returned from a trip to Home Depot (because one really needs the proper organizational system before even attempting to tidy the basement, of course) and let her out to the backyard, as per our normal routine. I'd noticed the whole poop-eating thing before, so I was vigilantly watching to try to discourage this behaviour. (Which is how I ended up running outside in pajamas, a robe and untied snowboots this morning, yelling, "Don't eat poop! That's gross!" The neighbors must be so happy I moved here.)

Sure enough, she starts to chow down on some frozen feces, so I race out to the backyard yelling "No no noooo!" and "Leave it!" She backs away, but she already has a poopsicle in her mouth, and she doesn't want to leave it ... and that's when she notices that I left the door to the house open. She takes off to enjoy her poopsicle inside where it's warm and cozy. I take off after her, but she's nimbler and scampers inside, where she jumps up to her favorite spot in the house -- our white couch.

THAT'S when she decides to leave it.

I have researched coprophagia (it's not like I came up with that word on my own) and apparently it's pretty common. Sometimes dogs just like the taste. Sometimes it means there's a deficiency in the dog's diet, but considering that she eats a special food that I can only buy at the vet's and which costs more than most of the food I buy for myself, I'm thinking that's not the problem.

She's now sitting contentedly by my side in the office, giving me looks that alternate between "You SAID to leave it, you didn't say WHERE" and "You know, I'm still hungry. Is it time for dinner yet?" Oh, now she's licking her leg. If you're wondering where that unpleasant taste in your mouth came from, Wonder Dog, I might have a few ideas.

It's amazing how a simple interaction can turn your whole day around. I finally ran out of things to procrastinate with and called United about my frequent flier miles. Actually, I just reached my very own tipping point where the procrastination tasks (organizing the basement) became less attractive than the task I was avoiding. It's the only way I get anything done around here.

This may seem silly but I have just been dreading calling United about my frequent flier miles. I needed to try to get credited for a few flights I've taken. They didn't get added to my account in part because United Mileage Plus was totally dumquizzled by my name change a few years ago, because apparently they've never in their history had to deal with someone changing their name after marriage, and I had accounts under two different names and it was all a big mess. But honestly part of the fault was mine, and my inability to stay on top of domestic tasks such as frequent-flier-mile crediting raises uncomfortable feelings of inadequacy that I would really rather not deal with if there's something else I could be doing, and really the last thing I need is to feel judged by a surly customer service rep.

So anyway, I finally overcame my personal issues and called... and the customer service rep was soooo helpful! I mean, it's not like she sounded as if she was loving life in the customer service dungeon, but she totally went the extra mile to find my flight information even though I didn't save my ticket receipt, which is different from the boarding pass or itinerary and apparently everyone but me knows that you must under all circumstances save your ticket receipt, keeping it in a briefcase handcuffed to your wrist if necessary. Bottom line, I got the miles credited which means I have enough miles for a free ticket somewhere nice sometime soon.

But really, even more importantly here, I learned a valuable Life Lesson, which is that my dread for certain tasks has a tendency to grow out-of-proportion to the actual task itself. I should keep that in mind the next time I find myself frantically procrastinating.

Now, on to organizing the basement -- right after I clean off my desk, and work out, and maybe clean the kitchen....

**The blogger spellcheck wanted to change my misspelling of procrastination to "procreation" -- well, I guess that's one way to do it.

As a former figure skating Olympic gold medalist, naturally everyone has been asking me what I thought of this year's competition.

Frankly, it was a little meh. I was disappointed that no one landed a triple-triple combo when it counted. Shizuka Arakawa skated a lovely, graceful program and definitely deserved to win. But she won by playing it safe. Which I guess is the way to go in figure skating.

Sasha Cohen again fell apart under the pressure, and I feel sorry for her a bit. I used to not like her because she looks sort of mean, in a pretty-girl-mean kind of way, but then I heard that she can press 400 pounds with her legs, which is awesome, and also I don't want her to kick me because it would probably hurt.

The one I really feel for is Irina Slutskaya -- love her, love her unfortunate-translation name, love the sparkly jumpsuit she wore in the short program. I wish she could have won, but I'm glad she lost to a woman skater and not a prepubescent girl. I was getting a little sick of that trend.

In conclusion, the winner played it safe and in hindsight, played it well. But that's not what the Olympics should be about, in my humble opinion. But at least skating hasn't totally gone the way of "women's" gymnastics yet, and someone with actual breasts won.

Edited to add: It has been brought to my attention that in fact I did not compete in the Olympics, but rather in Olympia, Washington. And that in fact I was not an ice skater, but a political reporter. And that the "gold medal" trophy I have is in fact a tin foil necklance that I sometimes make my dog wear.
Additionally, it has been pointed out to me that I did not win a pairs skating competition with D.B. Sweeney, an injured ex-ice hockey player who reluctantly agreed to be my partner and at first we totally hated each other but then our hate turned to fiery love, and then we skated to glory when we sucessfully completed the risky "Pachenko" move in competition after he finally told me he loved me just before our program started. Apparently that was a movie called "The Cutting Edge" starring Moira Kelly, and not my life.
This Americanadian Life regrets the error.

What happens to ice skating stars when they're old and washed up? (And by old I mean 23, of course.) I discovered the unsettling answer today: They play the feud! Family feud, that is. Boy skaters versus girl skaters for charity, which I guess elevates the personal dignity level up from "Standing in a chicken suit on the side of the road to promote a new fast food restaurant" to "hawking a genuine cubic zirconia ice-skate pendant on QVC."

Still, it wasn't pretty to see Jamie Pelletier and Sarah Hughes trying to guess what the survey says for questions like, "What item in the house do women use more than men?"

Sarah's answer: mascara. Only if you don't live with a male figure skater, I guess. Emily, look at your future and run, run far away.

Jamie's answer: the bathroom. Only if you're a bullemic desperately trying to purge back down to your ice princess weight and trying to disguise your body dysmorphic self under a shawl that looks like someone ate one of Tonya Harding's skating outfits, vomited it up, and gave it to a blind person as a knitting project. My survey says you and the 11 people who agreed with you on the survey need to go, take off that shawl, and eat a damn sandwich.

Tonya was not on the show, which is sad because I bet she would have bitch-slapped Richard Karn and his stupid beard into next week. "Survey says I kick your ass!"

Scott Hamilton was on the show, but I have nothing mean to say about him because I love me some little Scotty Hamilton!

The show did feature my good friend Kristi Yamaguchi, whom I met and became BFF with while working in South Carolina. She was the spokeswoman for this nasty-ass synthetic fabric they made there, and I covered her visit to the plant, during which she gave a hilariously vacuous speech (which I don't blame her for, because really how much can you say about acetate?) and pretended not to be grossed out when factory workers touched her.

One thing I learned during that assignment is that figure skaters are tiny! Kristi Yamaguchi was (and I'm guessing still is) about five feet tall and could have fit in my handbag. The ice makes people look really big for some reason. She was teensy and darling and made me feel like the Jolly Green Giant. Ho ho ho!

Kristi, I totally agree: Acetate IS the fabric of our future! (Assuming we live in a post-apocalyptic future of drab yet shiny jumpsuits, ruled by a quasi-military junta.)
Survey says call me!!!

I am disappointed in my fellow Canadians. They've got a prime opportunity to float the mother of all anti-American conspiracy theories, and yet I hear nothing. But I'm not afraid to blow the lid off this dastardly plot:

So the U.S. launches this secret wiretap program, allegedly to catch "terrorists," and yet the only crime-busting wiretap investigation I've heard about just happens to involve Wayne Gretzky, and it all just happens to break loose the week before the Olympics, where The Great One and his Olympic hockey team happen to be Not So Great, In Fact Kind Of Sucky, losing to Finland and Switzerland. The Swiss, for god's sake, beating Canada at hockey! Dark days above the 49th parallel, my friends, dark days indeed.

Between that and the women's curling team losing to Japan (who knew anyone outside Canada even had heard of curling?), the women's hockey game today will be Canada's big chance to restore some scrap of national pride.

In honor of my parents' visit this weekend, I was thinking of some of the advice they have given me over the years. They're probably astounded that I was paying attention to any of it, but yes, a few words of wisdom did sink in here and there. So, greatest hits of my parents' advice:

Mom's advice for cleaning the house: "Never run your finger through the dust. That's the biggest mistake you can make. Otherwise no one will ever notice it." (Mom's house, I must note, is much cleaner than mine and probably never has dust bunnies the size of actual overfed rabbits lurking in the corners.)

Dad's culinary advice: "Everything tastes better with nuts."
"Salad and bread are good together."
"If it has a drumstick, you're allowed to eat it with your hands."

Mom's advice for sending condolences: "Even if you don't know what to say, just say something. They'll be glad you sent a card. It really means a lot to people."

Dad's advice for new challenges: "Some people never do anything their whole lives, because they're scared to try new things. But you just have to try new things, even if you're nervous." (This advice delivered while driving me to the airport for my first big trip away from home, a model United Nations conference in Boston -- yes, I was adorably geeky.)

Now, the good advice that I ignored -- that's a whole nother topic.

My dog is on Valium. That sounds like some sort of punchline, but sadly, it is the plain truth. Apparently Wonder Dog took our four-day absence a bit hard -- she was panting and shaking and generally freaking out all day yesterday, until finally I took her to the vet to rule out any sort of catastrophic illness. Fifteen minutes and $70 later, the diagnosis: She just needs to like, chill out, man, and take one of these pills. After a dose of doggie Valium, she settled down and went to sleep and woke up as her normal mellow self this morning, much to my relief.

The irony is so profuse. This is a dog who generally sleeps about 20 hours a day. In the morning she waits until she's sure I'm filling her food bowl to get out of bed. Her response to any new stimulus is either #1, ask it for food, #2, roll over to get a tummy rub, or #3, fall asleep. I would have to rank WD up there with the three-toed sloth in the list of least-stressed animals.

Yet here she is, on Valium, while I remain tragically unmedicated. Unless I can persuade her to share...

I've never really aspired to be a White House reporter -- seems like a lot of stenography and kissing unpleasant ass to get super-secret triple-deep-background info from hacks who are just using you for their own political spin games -- but this transcript from today's White House press briefing almost makes it all seem worthwhile. You can almost smell the Scott McClellan flopsweat.

My favorite question: What time on Sunday morning did you learn that Vice President Dick Cheney was the shooter?

I think we all knew that it would come to this one sad day. Beware, for as Ernest Hemingway once said:

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."

Home is where the dog is. That was my thought as the lights of Toronto came into view through the window of the plane last night. I was returning to the land of white snowy beaches after a short but blissful visit to the land of white sand beaches, namely Florida's Gulf Coast, where my spousal unit judged a journalism contest while I hung out on the beach.

I still remember returning to my college dorm after winter break of my freshman year, and feeling surprised by the sensation of coming home when I dragged my suitcase into the quad and saw the lights of Old Campus. I was surprised because it was the first time I'd identified "home" as anywhere but where my parents and sister lived. The idea that I could make a home, by myself (albeit heavily emotionally and financially supported by my family), was at once liberating, empowering and a little strange and scary.

Since then, each time I move I wait for the moment where I feel myself identifying the new place as home. Last night, as the plane descended toward Pearson Airport ... I didn't feel it. I had already mistakenly said "when we get back to Seattle" a few times that day, so I guess my brain is not yet ready to accept that Toronto is our new home.

But I was happy to get back, of course, because waiting for my return was the Wonder Dog! Happy to see me and Wonderful as always, she reminded me that home is with my loved ones, canine and otherwise. As I drove back from the airport that night, I also realized that I've become familiar enough with Toronto's really not-at-all-intuitive highways to navigate without thinking about it much, and I've adapted enough to Canada weather that the snow blowing across the road didn't even faze me. So maybe I have further to go before this feels like home, but at least I'm starting to know my way around the place.

Today, I have achieved something I never before thought possible: I have the best hair cut and color of my life, and it only cost $24. I have seen through the evil manipulations of the hair care industry, and I have defied them, and I have looked in the mirror, and I have said yea, it is good. And whosoever telleth me that I have to spend $80 for a cut and blow dry, they shall be smoted (smitten? smited?) with lightening bolts of bleach.

So yeah, $16 for the cut at "Top Choice" haircutters on Queen Street (it's right next to the dog grooming place, but I'm sure that's totally coincidental) and $8 for Clairol Herbal Essences Bold N Brilliant Bleach Blonde. And if I may be so bold, it is totally brilliant. One hour and one mildly burning scalp later, my new look was born. It's sort of reminiscent of Nicole Kidman circa "The Interpreter," minus of course the flawless bone structure, anorexia, alabaster skin and crazy closeted Scientologist ex-husband. Other than that, me and Nic are like twins. And I bet she paid a lot more than $24 for her hair!

In non-shallow news, Wonder Dog and I made our first unsupervised visit to the nursing home today! It went well, though I could tell by the end Wonder Dog was like, "OK, enough with the old people touching me, and I was told there would be treats here?" The most touching moment was when an older man, with his daughter, scratched Lily's ears and said, "Angus, Angus." That was the name of his old dog. Then we left, and WD got treats and a nice romp in the off-leash park. Her hair looks fab too.

Welcome to all my visitors from Cyberjournalist.net! I do hope you'll take off your coat and stay awhile. I must warn you though, this blog is not so much concerned with the future of online media or anything highminded as all that. I'm more about random attempts at wit and occasional semi-unhinged rants on the subject of being an American Woman in the frozen north of Canada. (And if The Guess Who's "American Woman! Stay away from me-eee!" is now playing in your head, well done! They're Canadian, y'know.)

Actually, I'm going to have to lay off the frozen north, cold vast wasteland, icy tundra complaints. It's actually quite temperate and lovely! Winters that are chilly rather than wet is a new concept, true, but one I'm growing to enjoy. I'm not surprised the new PM, Stephen Harper, wants to pull out of the Kyoto agreement. Global warming ROCKS for Canada! Too bad, U.S. and South America -- see you at the next ice age, suckas! Bring it on, I say. There aren't any oceans near my house, so when the eastern seaboard goes underwater Toronto will be the new Miami! Muy caliente, eh?

What does a copy editor look like? Hopefully like me, this afternoon. I interviewed for a copy editing position at a magazine. Technically speaking my professional copy editing experience is, in the most unimaginative and strictly literal sense, a tad limited -- but really, aren't we all copy editors at heart when it comes down to it?? So I decided it wouldn't hurt to look the part. Which in my case means I wore my glasses, even though they hurt my ears, instead of contacts, and I put my hair up in a ponytail. (I thought a bun would be overdoing it.) Sober black suit, natch. Keep your fingers crossed and your participles non-dangling for me! (OK, maybe I should wait to see if I get the job before attempting copy editor humor.)

We'll see if my clever ruse works, though I think they'll probably pay more attention to this copy editing test I have here (take home, woo-hoo!!). It has already tried to trick me by spelling Toronto's Centre Island as "Center" Island -- but I caught it. I've got my eyes peeled for neighbours and colours as well. You crafty Canucks, you'll have to wake up earlier in the morning than that to foil me!

If you're at all interested in copy editing, or writing, or semi-cranky but amusing nitpicking, this site written by a Washington Post copy editor is great. I read it to get all psyched up before the interview.

While running errands today I looked up and saw a banner in a studio window advertising "PILATES DANCE FIGHT."

I know these are very likely three separate services being offered, but in my heart I wish it meant I could go there to learn the ancient yet deadly fighting discipline of Pilates Dance. They stun you with their core strength, then kill with a step-ball-change to the head. Or, it could be advertising a midnight rumble between the pilates people and the dancers -- "We said, 'OK, no rumpus, no tricks.' But just in case they jump us, we're ready to mix. Tonight..."

Either way, I could hardly be blamed for wandering the grocery aisles in a contemplative daze over that one.

Newsflash from The Globe and Mail today: $1 million homes are nice! And the people who buy them can be picky.

Hmmmm, I smell a NYT Sunday Styles story!